


clinging

by wearethewitches



Series: sixty-seven thousand miles an hour | the doctor is not a monk [8]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Light Angst, Mentioned Donna Noble, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: “Tell me about her,” she presses.“About Donna?"-Kera belongs to a galaxy with a long, long memory. So, the Doctor tells her about a legend.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Donna Noble, Thirteenth Doctor & Original Character(s)
Series: sixty-seven thousand miles an hour | the doctor is not a monk [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652698
Kudos: 19





	clinging

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: hugs

Kera prefers the dark of space, to sunshine.

When she asks, her alien mother – the _Doctor,_ who she calls Mum – will sit with her in the open TARDIS doors, looking out into space dust and asteroid fields. Kera had full colour vision when she was younger, unlike her blood-mother, Lora of Erador, but when she looked into the Infinite Schism at eight years old, she began to see further and _brighter_ – on spectrums barely visible to her before.

In space, that means that even the barest voids are beautiful. The lack of light makes what little there is even more spectacular.

“You’re very appreciative of art,” says Mum, sipping her thermos of tea. They sit on her long coat, legs dangling. “You like the little things.”

“Do you like the big things?”

“I like both.” Her mother wraps an arm around her and Kera snuggles into her side, biting into the last custard cream. “Big things are amazing, but seeing them just makes the little things just that more amazing.”

“Hmm…” _Tell me a story about a little thing,_ she asks her over their mental bond, something that has always felt special – sacred, even. Oh, she has them with her siblings and even had a tentative bond with her blood-mother, but it’s different for Time Lords. Their minds are chasms, endless as the void and bonds are bridges. The stronger the bond, the stronger the bridge.

The Doctor hums and asks her, “Have I ever told you about Donna Noble?”

“Donna Noble? The legend? You _knew_ her?” Kera asks, looking away from space, up at her mother in awe.

Her mother laughs and it’s sad. “She was my best friend. I’d cut off my hand during the first fifteen hours of regeneration and poured in another, less than an hour before twenty-seven planets were pulled by the Daleks into the Medusa Cascade; and she became the Doctor Donna, through it. Brilliant – ‘cause Donna _was_ brill, even before that. Always had been. Best temp in Chiswick.” Kera watches the smile fade from her mother’s face, that face that shows her ancient history appearing in its place. Kera wants the smile back.

“Tell me about her,” she presses.

“About Donna? Oh, brill, epic, awesome – every word like that describes Donna,” says Mum. “But she always thought the worst of herself. She was loud and passionate, one of the best humanity had to offer. Good kisser, in retrospect.”

Kera sighs lowly. “Have you kissed all your companions?”

“Most of the ones with that face,” Mum jokes. “He was a fancy man, that one. The next one had a chin, but he wasn’t much better. He did it on purpose, though. It was all obtuse handsomeness with fancy man-”

“And Donna?” Kera interrupts.

“Ginger. Brassy, bold, clever – kind. If she was ever quiet, something had to be wrong with the world. The Ood were freed because of her. All those lost and stolen planets – all saved.”

“Erador went out of alignment when Women Wept disappeared.”

“Donna saved the universe,” Mum insists. “Those planets were stolen by the Daleks. Together, they made the Reality Bomb, a weapon that would have disintegrated the universe and beyond. Donna- Donna got shut in the TARDIS, when we were supposed to leave. Time was looping back on her, pushing her towards the epicentre of a fundamental change in the order of things.”

“What was it?”

For a little while, her mother is quiet and Kera returns to the view, watching the eddies of light and dust swirl together in harmony, out there in the black. Eventually, though, the Doctor finishes her story.

“Donna touched my severed hand, full of regeneration energy. It triggered a biological metacrisis – gave nine hundred odd years of my memory that she couldn’t handle forever, at the same time. The other me turned out to be half Human, half Time Lord. Or, well, Gallifreyan.”

“But that’s not right,” Kera argues, brow furrowing. “How? Alexis is the only one-”

“It isn’t the same,” her mother cuts in. “The creation of the metacrisis was a unique event in all of time and space. He only had one heart and no regeneration energy that I could sense. Gallifreyans are a product of genetic engineering and the Human half of him wiped that clean. Humans – they last so long, to the end of the universe, even. It’s a neat trick of evolution, how they dominate biologically…”

Kera’s stomach turns and she nibbles on her biscuit, trying to save it as she asks, croakily, “What happened to Donna?” She already feels a foreboding. The laws of the galaxy were always clear – all the legends the same.

Donna Noble saved them all, at the cost of her life.

“Her mind began to burn. It couldn’t handle all of me, like that.” Her mother tells her, sounding so sad. Kera’s eyes prick with tears.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

“She lived a good life,” she comforts her daughter, hand carding through her paper-white hair. “I got in one last trick, before- well, before it killed her. All her memories are behind a mental block that I put in her mind. Every memory of mine and everything that- everything that could trigger it, too.”

“Oh, stars…” Kera struggles not to cry. “That’s worse than death.”

“I’ll never forgive myself. You know as well as I do how much she was loved, even two and a half thousand years later. She was my best friend.” And the words echo in Kera’s mind again, coated in grief and loss and love.

_She was my best friend._

Unable to hold them back any longer, Kera bursts into tears, stuffing the last of her biscuit into her mother’s mouth when she starts to panic. Her mother mentally chastises her, even as she thanks her for the custard cream, bundling her into her lap and hugging her tight, as much for Kera’s sake as for her own.

For the longest time, they sit there in the doors of the TARDIS, with a backdrop of invisible light – grieving for Donna Noble.


End file.
